Russian company to produce 10 small commsats for India within five years

NEW DELHI, September 25. /ITAR-TASS/. The Russian subdivision of the multinational space company Dauria Aerospace and India's Aniara Communications Company have agreed to advance ten small small geostationary spacecraft, developed and made in Russia, on the markets of Asia and the Middle East witnin five years. A respective agreement was signed on Thursday on the sidelines of the first Skolkovo Foundation Council session in India.

Sergey Ivanov, General Director of the Dauria Aerospace, told ITAR-TASS, "The Agreement provides for Aniara's exclusive right to promote our communications satellites over a period of five years. So, this refers to the development, production and launching of ten spacecraft for Aniara".

Earlier, at the Farnborough air show, Aniara announced its decision to place an order with the Dauria Aerospace for two satellites, and signed an agreement on the designing and production of spacecraft with an aggregate cost of $200 million. The Russian side expects to launch them at the end of 2017 early in 2018 by means of one carrier rocket.

Ivanov specified, "A timeframe regarding the production of ten satellites are in the stage of discussion so far. We expect that it will take three years to make the first two spacecraft and two years to produce subsequent ones. The designing and development of the spacecraft is to be completed by December this year".

The Dauria Aerospace brings into being and deploys an orbital cluster on the basis of small spacecraft. The Company designs and makes publicly-financed satellites at the Ames research center of NASA in California and the Skolkovo innovations center near Moscow. A low price /$100 million per spacecraft/ and a weight of less than one tonne are characteristic of small geostationary satellite platforms.